Company of Heroes Know Your Mechanic - Population and Upkeep

Know Your Mechanic - Population and Upkeep
Panzer 4 Evolution
Tip: the Soviet sniper’s flare ability can be activated instantaneously and without revealing cover if you shift-queue 3 commands: move, flare, move.
Why are Brits used so rarely in tournaments, if they are not considered underpowered?
Help with COH 1 I want to deselect the alternate units
How to play Soviet Union?
ZiS-3 76mm divisional field gun light artillery barrage not working when playing with friends?
Online games only vs cpu?
How hard would it be so I can see what the total army values are?
Is there a way to make a command post from a random building?

Know Your Mechanic - Population and Upkeep

Posted: 30 Dec 2020 06:08 AM PST

Hello fellow CoH2-er, this is VictorStewart, bringing you another guide, this time, about a rather subtle and unnoticed mechanic of Population and Upkeep. While many of us know the gist of it: "The more unit you build, the less income you have." How exactly does this mechanic work? Let's find out!

Population

What is Population Cap?

Population cap is the in-game feature that each player is given in the game as the limit to their army size. In standard game mode, each player will be given a population cap of 100.

Unit Population Cost

Every unit/emplacement in the game is assigned with a population cost that will count toward the population cap. If there is not enough population cap available to build a unit, you will not be able to deploy them to the field. Powerful units such as heavy tanks tend to have higher population costs to reflect their massive impact on the battlefield.

As we know, most infantries in the game are available to us as a squad of multiple models. Each of these models takes up 1 population space. However, we observe cases like this:

At full size, Shock Troop cost 8 Pop

If each model costs 1 Pop, why does this lone guy hold 3 Pop?

To explain this, each squad has a base population, which is the population for the squad's existence without regard to the model count yet. In this case, the Shock Troop squad has a base population of 2 and then 1 more for each model (makes up 8 population when in full squad size).

Exceeding Population Cap

While the population cap limits the army size, players can exceed this limit but crewing abandoned tanks or emplacements (such as Pak43, Howitzer). Reaching the population limit or exceeding it so will bar your troop from being further deployed or reinforced.

A popular example of going over the population cap is from the USF's Vehicle Crew Disembark ability which allows the tank to eject the crew and reduce their population down. Since Vehicle Crew squad only takes up 4 population, it is possible to build up to 22 Sherman tanks.

Upkeep

What is Upkeep?

Upkeep is the maintenance cost of every active unit on the battlefield. Therefore, the larger the army size, the more upkeep cost there is. This mechanic, in many RTS games, is a way to keep the stronger player from snowballing too hard and the weaker player to have a chance at bouncing back in the game.

https://preview.redd.it/yds31o8i3c861.png?width=356&format=png&auto=webp&s=b4b736604b29a61923e06702bd21dc371e07e5e6

Upkeep is only applied to the player's Manpower income and NOT Fuel or Munition income.

How much is the Upkeep Cost?

We have the formula:

Upkeep Cost = Population × 1.5

Take the Shock Troop picture above as an example: We see that the population of 8 will incur an 8 x 1.5 = 14 MP/min penalty, resulting in 288 MP per minute.

At 0 Population, the player (by default) are given the Manpower income rate of 300MP/min

300 - (8 x 1.5) = 288MP/min

What happens when the calculation leads to a non-integer number?

In many cases, a unit's population value is an odd number which gives us a value with a .5 at the end. The game will display the adjusted Manpower income rounding up. However, this should only be a display as the game will display the true value when it can be rounded to a full number again.

Take this Volksgrenadier (Population cost - 7) example:

The Upkeep should be 10.5 but the game display as a rounded up number

If it was actually 10 instead of 10.5. We would see +280MP/min instead of 279

What happens to the Upkeep when I only lose the squad member(s) but not the squad?

Since each model only takes up the population while they are on the battlefield, the Upkeep will correspond with model losses and reinforcement. Every model loss you take will immediately increase your manpower income by 1.5 per minute (show +2 when the first model dies as the result of round-up display, then only +1 to make a full +3 when another model dies)

Some interesting scenarios we may wonder about dying off models:

- Crawler (aka, units model that dies but still crawl on the ground for a short moment): They are no longer part of the squad and considered dead, you should get your income refund immediately.

These poor fellas got the Stuka bomb dropped. They crawled on the ground and I had my full income back

- Team weapon decrewed: When certain team weapons drop down to 1 model (or 2 models for USF Pack Howitzer), they will run away to the off-map which effectively announces the squad's death. In this case, the whole squad is considered dead and thus, the base population will be refunded. HOWEVER, the running model is still counted toward your population so you will have the Upkeep cost until they die or got out of the map.

In the example below with Pak40, the squad pop is 7 (3 base pop + 4 models). After the 3-model loss, I got back my income from everything but that one running man.

Shameful display! A coward and a waste of income!

What happens to the Upkeep when Population Cap is exceeded?

The Upkeep will still apply beyond the given 100 Population cap. However, it will stop when the player reaches the Manpower income rate of +100/min. Any further population breach will not increase the Upkeep Cost.

At 100 Pop, we see 300 - (100 x 1.5) = 150 (as expected)

Exceeding the Cap further drop the income

The income would have been only +39MP/min if there is no cap to the Upkeep

Conclusion

With this, now you know how Population and Upkeep work in the game. While the Upkeep mechanic exists as a way to keep the game from snowballing too hard in favour of the winning player, you should not be deterred from building more units to gain the advantage to win the game. I hope you find this guide to be interesting and enlightening about how much data/information is going on behind the game! If you have any questions regarding the topic, I would love to hear them so I can update the guide.

Thank you very much for reading and happy CoH-ing!

submitted by /u/VictorStewartCA
[link] [comments]

Panzer 4 Evolution

Posted: 30 Dec 2020 10:16 AM PST

submitted by /u/jimynono
[link] [comments]

Tip: the Soviet sniper’s flare ability can be activated instantaneously and without revealing cover if you shift-queue 3 commands: move, flare, move.

Posted: 30 Dec 2020 02:34 PM PST

Discovered this inadvertently the other day. You should still hear the sound of the flare firing, but as the sniper reaches the first spot you told them to move to they will instantly turn and continue on to the next move point. The flare appears in the sky a few seconds later. If you stay in cover for all movement, your sniper will not even reveal camo when they fire the flare.

Edit: spelling

submitted by /u/heartdropsdaily
[link] [comments]

Why are Brits used so rarely in tournaments, if they are not considered underpowered?

Posted: 30 Dec 2020 11:22 AM PST

Basically what the title says. Pretty sure that the latest tourneys didnt really have Brit picks.

But at the same time, I dont really see people complaining about Brits being underpowered all that often. I do see complaints about them, and I also see praise directed towards their units, but rarely do I see complaints of them being weak.

submitted by /u/Codimus123
[link] [comments]

Help with COH 1 I want to deselect the alternate units

Posted: 30 Dec 2020 06:50 PM PST

I recently reinstalled the game and from what I remember you should be able to click on the green gear to change if you want the Hellcat to replace the wolverine etc. but click dose nothing for me.

can anyone tell me how to get access to the old standard units?

https://preview.redd.it/4dv10phirf861.png?width=822&format=png&auto=webp&s=e63c260906652f7d3b6f6887e7728a53cdf24e93

submitted by /u/morebooksthanmusic
[link] [comments]

How to play Soviet Union?

Posted: 30 Dec 2020 12:33 PM PST

I find myself ALWAYS lose to Pz.IV or medium tanks during middle game and having a hard time fighting with OKW units, pls help.

submitted by /u/Ice258852
[link] [comments]

ZiS-3 76mm divisional field gun light artillery barrage not working when playing with friends?

Posted: 30 Dec 2020 11:56 AM PST

So me and some friends have been playing Company of Heroes 2 a lot lately and whenever I play the soviets with them the light artillery barrage option is blocked. However if I play against a bot alone the ability is perfectly usable.

I feel like this should not be the case especially since in this video at about the 14:50 minute mark you can see this ability being used.

I am certain that it is not locked behind a veterancy level because there is no star sign on it. It is just locked away. Before I saw the video I thought it might be a balancing issue for multiplayer but seeing how the video is recent (29.12.20) I seriously started doubting that too.

Anyone know what might be the reason for this ability to be off in multiplayer matches? It's seriously annoying me because it could sometimes make a huge difference at not using it is a huge bummer.

submitted by /u/Laruquen
[link] [comments]

Online games only vs cpu?

Posted: 30 Dec 2020 02:23 PM PST

New to the game, and have been playing against computers. When i browse online games to join everyone is just playing against computers. Am I doing something wrong or is this just what the player base is doing now.

submitted by /u/Cakemate1
[link] [comments]

How hard would it be so I can see what the total army values are?

Posted: 30 Dec 2020 11:16 AM PST

As a soviet, I'm used to my army value being a bit lower, but I'd like to see how much we came back or through a match.

submitted by /u/Team-CCP
[link] [comments]

Is there a way to make a command post from a random building?

Posted: 29 Dec 2020 10:14 PM PST

submitted by /u/Omni2123
[link] [comments]